Cairo- On Sunday, a small Coptic Christian community announced that they would stage an open sit-in on the premises of Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Abbasiya until the government responds to their demands to pray inside their village. The Coptic community of Kom El-Lufi village, in Samalut District in Minya governorate (245 km (152 miles) south of Cairo), said in a statement that they are pure Egyptians and have every right to freely practice their religious rites. They clamored for enforcing law on extremists who dominate the Minya governorate and object to building churches for Copts in villages. The community said those hardliners had attacked and injured four of them when they received a prayer permit at the Thursday Mass last April. Coptic Christians make up 10 percent of Egypt's total population of some 91 million. In a press release, the Coptic community spokesperson, Emad Estefanos said: "We are now at the cathedral. We arrived here yesterday to make our voices heard and to reach out to every official so that they may feel the pain and suffering in which we have to live with in the village where rule of law is not properly implemented. We will hold a sit-in strike inside the cathedral until our crisis is resolved."
